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The ‘Fifty Shades’ Tail: How Long, And Far, Will It Stretch?
Those who thought interest in Fifty Shades of Grey would be a flash in the pan were, well, wrong. The trilogy has sold over 10 million copies in print alone. Industry insiders are now asking themselves where the Fifty Shades readers will turn next.
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Getting Healthy: Focus on Health 2012
Gone are the days when patients relied solely on information straight from the doctor’s mouth. The health-conscious face a multitude of would-be advisers online, from Google-derived self-diagnosis and treatment to WebMD’s frightening postings on exotic illnesses. Unwilling to be left out, book publishers, too, are joining the fray, with a cornucopia of rich offerings in the health category.
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Going Electronic
Cookbooks are quickly migrating into e-books—even the James Beard Foundation will open next year's awards to include digital cookbooks.
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Falling for Films of Fall: Movie Tie-ins Fall 2012
In addition to the diverse assortment of new releases and top-of-the-line stars, this season’s tie-ins might also represent the largest crop of classic movie revisions we’ve collected in some time—Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights, Les Misérables (the musical!)—sprinkled with a liberal dose of contemporary star power. Among the noted authors represented are such classic and current names as Tolstoy, Emily Brontë, F. Scott Fitzgerald, David Mitchell, Lee Child, and Yann Martel. As usual, several new releases are dedicated to the younger set: this season’s movies run the gamut from a resurrected—pun intended—1984 Tim Burton short (Frankenweenie) to a new format for an old favorite (Finding Nemo 3D), and from the final bow for a big-screen juggernaut (Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2) to a pair of silver screen debuts (Rise of the Guardians and Wreck-It Ralph).
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Strength in Stitchery
The DIY trend kick-started by a younger generation forming Stitch ’n Bitch knitting circles in the early 2000s hardly seems like a trend any longer. A decade and change on, it’s simply a part of the culture. As a result, publishers have seen the craft category—which encompasses titles about sewing, knitting, crochet, jewelry making, and just about any other handmade art you can think of—grow to a stable level of healthy demand.
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Fiction Firsts for Fall: First Fiction 2012
PW looks at 10 particularly intriguing and promising debut novels. A strikingly varied assortment, these fictional works discuss artificial intelligence, the extinction of human life, and the Iraq War from two distinctly different viewpoints.
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Fall 2012 Audiobook Listings: The Sounds of Autumn
Early fall audiobooks are already winging their way to retailers (digitally and otherwise), as casting and recording of the remainder of the season’s titles is in full swing. In our latest listing, we turn a spotlight on some of this robust season’s most interesting offerings.
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Fall 2012 Religion Listings: No-brainers and Devout Wishes
Some things don’t change. A few fall titles seem destined for greatness in sales. Grace: More than We Deserve, Greater than We Imagine by Max Lucado has a lot of things going for it: Lucado’s track record of millions and millions of books sold, a quarter-million dollar launch budget, and a concept—grace—that is one of Christian theology’s kindest. Also likely for the winner’s circle is The Bridge by Karen Kingsbury. Readers consume her inspirational novels like cookies; this one has some bonus ingredients in the recipe: it’s Christmasy, though not extensively so, and it features a financially threatened independent bookstore.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Literary Biographies, Essays, & Criticism - The Last Word
When it comes to an author’s legacy, who gets the last word? (Let’s forget for a moment the noble idea that the work speaks for itself.) Is it the author, the biographer, or the critic? Fall’s books offer fans and scholars a multitude of perspectives on the literary life.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Science - The Sun, Energy, and Numbers, Oh, My
From exploring the universe to understanding the role of mathematics, science books range widely this fall. There are cataclysms both cosmic and Earth-bound; a scientist takes on a Bible story; sleep gets a close examination; and numbers are made to show off their exciting side.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Sports - The Sporting News
Inevitably, sports books sell and get significant attention when they are driven by events—great contests, great scandals, or the kinds of personalities that are events in themselves. This fall, there are several titles that stand out as likely to benefit from combinations of those headline-grabbing factors.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Poetry - Lives' Work
Poetry is bringing out some of its biggest guns for fall 2012, massive retrospective collections from some of the most famous poets—and some of them are actually famous, not just poetry-famous—writing in English. Along with being famous, many of this fall’s poets are important and breathtakingly good. There are a bunch of poetry books coming out that everyone who reads poetry will have to own.
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Introducing Our Fall 2012 Announcements
Here are our editors’ picks of the notable books of the season by category, 1,093 titles in all across the 19 categories, ranging from art, business, and cookbooks to fiction, memoir, lifestyle, poetry, sports, and travel. Our editors also selected their top 10 books in each category, which they introduce with essays. We hope that this selection gives booksellers, librarians, and media a good snapshot of what the fall season holds in store. It’s bound to be cooler...right?
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Romance - Home Is Where the Hearts Are
This fall’s romance listings have appeal for adventurers and risk-takers, but shy spirits needn’t worry—there’s also plenty of cozy comfort reading. It turns out there are as many definitions of “home” as there are couples looking to build new lives together.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Politics - Beyond Partisanship
After an Obama-centric spring that tried to prep (or inflame) conscientious readers before the election, fall’s titles consider matters of state other than partisan gridlock. At least, some of them do.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Memoir
Memoirs look at life: for Richard Russo, whose novels reflect his working-class origins, it’s contemplating a childhood marked by poverty in the factory town of Gloversville, N.Y., but also gifted with the love and inspiration of his mother, in Elsewhere: A Memoir. Literary critic Marco Roth tells a different story of childhood in The Scientists: A Family Romance.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Art & Architecture - Green Is the Color
The environment is on everyone’s mind, one way or other, whether it is a subject that invites debate or advocacy—or terror. This fall’s books—especially in architecture but also in other, subtler contexts—will keep the environment front and center.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: History & Military History - From Monticello to Monte Cristo
We mustn’t let the continuing plethora of books on the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, not to mention commemorations of the War of 1812, mask the variety of history and military history books coming out this fall.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Mysteries & Thrillers - Distinguished Debuts, Hot Historicals
This season boasts a number of impressive first novels, led by Ariel S. Walker’s The Twenty-year Death, which consists of three interrelated sections, each written in the style of an iconic crime writer—Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler, and Jim Thompson—and set, respectively, in 1931, 1941, and 1951. This tour de force, as J.I. Baker notes in his boxed PW review, “transcends the formal gimmick at its heart.”
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Travel - It’s a Small World, After All
Travel literature dates back to a time when seeing the world was an expensive and time-consuming enterprise reserved for the privileged, like Charles Dickens, whose Pictures from Italy, about a yearlong trip to Italy, combined his gifts of imagination and observation.
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